Where Unspoken Words Take Us: The Abilene Paradox

When was the last time you went along with something you didn’t actually want, because you assumed everyone else did?

How many times have you found yourself in a meeting — or on a trip, or at a dinner — that nobody actually wanted to be at? How many times, after a major company decision, did you hear someone say: “honestly, none of us were really on board with this”?

Or perhaps the more familiar version: you made a sacrifice for someone you love, something you never truly wanted to do — and when it didn’t work out the way you hoped, you came home feeling invisible. Unappreciated. Deflated.

Welcome to the Abilene Universe.

The Story Behind the Paradox

The Abilene Paradox was first described in 1974 by management expert Jerry B. Harvey — and it begins with a road trip nobody asked for.

Harvey was visiting his in-laws in Texas when his father-in-law suggested driving 85 kilometres to the town of Abilene. Harvey, his wife, and his mother-in-law all agreed. They climbed into a car with no air conditioning and set off through the dust and the heat.

When they returned, each person admitted, one by one, that they hadn’t wanted to go. The father-in-law had only suggested it because he thought everyone was bored. Harvey and his wife had gone along for him. The mother-in-law had simply followed the majority.

Nobody wanted to go to Abilene. But they all went together.

Harvey named this dynamic the Abilene Paradox: when a group collectively drifts toward a decision that none of its members actually want, because each person makes false assumptions about what the others want — and no one says what they really think.

Why Do We Make Decisions We Don’t Want?

The Abilene Paradox is not simply a case of “one person led everyone astray.” That framing is too clean. What we’re dealing with is a far more complex group dynamic — and the responsibility is rarely so neatly located.

Describing it as “one person who failed to communicate clearly, followed by well-meaning others” misses the point. This is a collective communication failure, and the responsibility is distributed:

The one who makes the suggestion: Like Harvey’s father-in-law, this person proposes something they don’t genuinely want — usually out of a desire to be considerate, to give others something to do, to keep the peace. Their real wishes get quietly set aside.

Those who stay silent: Group members who hold back their true thoughts, operating under the assumption that “everyone else wants this.” They go along not out of conviction, but out of deference.

The group dynamic itself: A culture or atmosphere that makes dissent feel costly — where harmony and agreement are so highly prized that honest difference becomes almost unspeakable. This doesn’t require a toxic environment. Even in well-intentioned groups, especially those shaped by strong cultural norms around respect and hierarchy, authentic communication can be quietly suffocated long before anything resembling a “culture of compliance” sets in.

The initiator’s role may feel weightier — they did, after all, set the wrong direction. But the others are not passive. Staying silent is also a choice.

The Abilene Paradox Through a Transactional Analysis Lens

Transactional Analysis (TA) gives us a particularly useful lens for understanding why this pattern is so persistent — and so invisible.

The person who makes the suggestion typically operates from the Rescuer position, in a Nurturing Parent ego state. The internal script runs something like: “I should do something for the group.” Their own genuine needs are bypassed. This often reflects a deeply internalised message from early life — put others first — and a tendency to measure their own worth through others’ approval.

Those who stay silent tend to remain in the Adapted Child ego state. Internal recordings like “don’t make waves,” “do as you’re told,” “be agreeable” override their rational capacity to evaluate the situation. By adopting the Victim role, they also sidestep the responsibility of making their own choices.

The resulting group dynamic is a system of complementary transactions, where each person’s behaviour reinforces the other’s. Parent-Child transactions dominate. Healthy Adult-to-Adult communication almost entirely disappears. And the behavioural patterns learned in early childhood quietly continue to run the room.

The visible payoff of the whole game is that “everyone is happy.” In reality, no one’s authentic needs are being met.

The most useful way to understand Abilene is not as an individual failure, but as a collective phenomenon — one that emerges from the absence of a culture of open communication. The real solution is not to find someone to blame, but to create the conditions in which everyone can speak honestly.

This dynamic maps beautifully onto another key concept in Transactional Analysis: the Drama Triangle — Rescuer, Victim, Persecutor. I’ll be exploring that connection in a dedicated post.

Questions That Can Help Us Break the Abilene Cycle

Before closing, I want to offer a set of questions that can serve as a compass — both for individual decisions and for moments in groups when something feels off:

• “If you were making this decision entirely on your own, what would you choose?”
• “If you weren’t worried about what others might think, what would you actually want to do?”
• “What is your body telling you right now? Are you aware of any tension or discomfort?”
• “What assumptions are you making about this situation? How do you know they’re true?”
• “What is it that’s stopping you from saying what you really think?”
• “Is there a gap between your values and your behaviour here?”
• “If you found yourself in a similar situation again, what would you do differently?”

As a coach, one of the things I care about most deeply is creating space for the people I work with to discover what they actually think, to develop the courage to say it, and to make decisions grounded in their own values — rather than in their assumptions about what others expect.

If you’ve read this far and you’re thinking “what a waste of time” — welcome to Abilene. At least the awareness is there now.

So: in the Abilene Paradox, where do you usually find yourself? The one who makes the suggestion? The one who stays quiet? Or the one who simply goes along?

With warmth,
Özlem Sezer

Through the Lens of Morjinal Trust Architecture™: Abilene Is a Trust Problem

The Abilene Paradox is not merely a failure of communication. It is a quiet photograph of a trust architecture in collapse.

Trust Architecture™, the proprietary framework developed by Morjinal UK Ltd, approaches trust as a three-layered structure:

Competence Trust — “Can this person do what’s needed?”
Intent Trust — “Is this person genuinely with me, or running their own agenda?”
System Trust — “Is this structure fair? Can my voice actually be heard here?”

In the Abilene scenario, all three layers fail simultaneously. No one is willing to reveal their true intentions. There is no shared belief that the group is a safe space for a different voice. And everyone is misreading everyone else.

Where trust is absent, authentic voice cannot exist. Trust Architecture™ offers a systematic path to building that foundation — in individuals, teams, and organisations.

To learn more about Trust Architecture™ →

References

Harvey, J. B. (1974). The Abilene paradox: The management of agreement. Organizational Dynamics, 3(1), 63–80.

Berne, E. (1964). Games people play: The psychology of human relationships. Grove Press.

Sezer, Ö. (2024). Trust Architecture™ methodology guide. Morjinal UK Ltd.